After months of non-stop rain and cold weather, Spring finally brings warmth and a break in the rain, so that progress can be made on my new shop building, but I’ve got to work fast!
Concrete forms and footings finally take shape and suddenly it looks like tomorrow is concrete day!
I had to work fast so I strung a string between the water line entrance point and the back corner of the shop and started trenching from both ends to the middle.
Then it was time to dig the middle out and finish the trench. Once again, my BXpanded trencher bucket gets it done. The two section of trench didn’t line up perfectly so I widen the side of the trench a bit so that they do line up.
So far, I haven’t had to deal with big rocks that I couldn’t get out of the ground. Hopefully, my luck will hold for these last few feet.
My luck did hold out, so I could move on to putting the pipe together. First, I decided how tall I wanted the pipe at the rear of the shop to stick up out of the ground, then get to work. Half a brick makes a perfect prop to keep the pipe off the ground.
I had to dig under the form where the pipe will head off toward the pool house before gluing the last section of pipe. Then I evened out the trench with a trenching shovel and removed any stray rocks..
I hand buried the pipe for the first few inches to protect it from any rocks that may get pushed in when backfilling with the tractor.
Daytime song birds gave way to evening chorus of frogs and crickets.
Like with the pool house water line, I put a piece of rubber gym floor mat right where the pipe goes over a big rock.
Finally, it’s ready for backfilling with the tractor.
As it got dark, I turned on my ROPS LED work lights, which are wonderful to have, by the way. A must-have mod on a tractor, in my opinion.
So all this rush rush work and then the next day… …no concrete. The trucks wouldn’t be able to arrive in time to finish the shop building pour in a day. But we did make progress, and most importantly, I got to have some fun moving a pile of dirt with one of Bob’s skid steers. Stay tuned for that and more.
DIY My Way 